Zen Of Zombie
Better Living Through the Undead
Scott Kenemore
Text copyright © 2007 by Scott Kenemore
Illustrations copyright © 2007 by Adam Bozarth
Design by Adam Bozarth
All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without the express written consent of the publisher, except in the case of brief excerpts in critical reviews or articles. All inquiries should be addressed to Skyhorse Publishing, 555 Eighth Avenue, Suite 903, New York, NY 10018.
www.skyhorsepublishing.com
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3
9781602391871
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication-Data is available on file.
Printed in China
For C.C. and E.C., who have saved me from zombies and worse
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
INTRODUCTION
PART ONE: - The 24 Habits of Highly Effective Zombies
1 - Be Adaptable
2 - Play to Your Strengths (and Ignore Your Weaknesses)
3 - I Will Choose Free Will
4 - Succeed as a Corporate Zombie
5 - Slow Down! (You Move Too Fast)
6 - Be Your Own Boss
7 - Whereof One Cannot Speak . . .
8 - Nobody Likes a Player-Hater
9 - Strength in Numbers
10 - Remember That Assholes Tend to Get Their Comeuppances (Frequently, at the Hands of Zombies)
11 - Winners Don’t Use Drugs
12 - Bros Before Hos . . .
13 - Get the Government off Our Backs
14 - Rugged Individualism
15 - Nobody Likes a Tourist
16 - We’re Here! We’re Animated Corpses Irresistibly Drawn to Feed on the Flesh of the Living! Get Used to It!
17 - Age Ain’t Nothin’ But a Number . . .
18 - Live in the Real World
19 - No Profiling (Racial or Otherwise)
20 - W.W.Z.D.?
21 - “Fair and Balanced” My Rotting Zombie Ass!
22 - Remember, It’s Just Stuff
23 - “Live” Free or Die
24 - Digging a Grave? You’ve Got It Made!
PART TWO: - Your Guide to Complete Zombification in 90 Days
-1 - The Preparation
1 - No Fear? Know Fear!
2 - Sticking to Your (Zombie) Guns
3 - The Silence of the Zombies
4 - Zombies Level All
5 - Pax Zombana
6 - What’s That Rule? Play It Cool.
7 - Love Zombie
8 - Perfection Is a Skinned Knee
9 - No Credit Letting Go of Your Ego and Adopting a Zombie’s Spirit of Cooperation
10 - Do Go There (and Stay There Until You Get What You Want)
11 - In the Zombie Zone
12 - The Zen of Zombie
Endnote
INTRODUCTION
I feel like such a zombie today.
Don’t just stare at me like a zombie.
I feel like I’m just going through life like a zombie.
We’ve all heard the slurs and stereotypes, but few people stop to consider how much humans have to learn from zombies. What about all the good things zombies do?
This book is a guide through the life lessons that can be gleaned from one of the netherworld’s most successful creatures: the implacable, untamable zombie.
Whatever your setback or ailment, zombies feel your pain.
Have you ever felt as if other people were smarter than you? Quicker on the uptake?
Zombies feel this way every day.
Have you ever been tongue-tied while those around you knew exactly what to say? (Maybe when you did speak, it came out as nothing more than some guttural croaks and gurgles, and possibly very simple words like “brains?”)
Zombies haven’t let this stop them.
Do you drool at inappropriate times? Stagger when you walk? Stare unblinkingly at passersby, sometimes for hours on end, unnerving each one of them?
Friend, a zombie knows your pain all too well.
And yet despite being host to not one or two, but numerous psycho-physiological setbacks, zombies have done more than simply survive. They have persevered. And you can too.
Historically maligned and stereotyped for their irritating habits (walking into moving traffic, disturbing graveyard landscaping, eating people’s brains), zombies can also be valuable guides through life. Few of us have stopped to consider the valuable life lessons that zombies are able to teach us. Until now.
It is no accident that zombies have proved the most adaptable, reliable, and inveterate agents of the netherworld. While they may not look like much on paper (slow-moving, dull-witted, unspeakably ghastly), they have many skills and qualities to envy.
(Here it should be noted that some zombie researchers have posited the existence of zombies who can move quickly, eat things other than human brains, and are capable of more than halting speech. For our purposes here, these will be assumed to be aberrations rather than the norm. While articulate, omnivore zombies who can win the hundred-yard dash would be interesting subjects to study, it is all the more remarkable that it is not these super-zombies who have been so prominent and successful. Rather, it has been the stupefied, outrun-able, dullard zombie—with the most limited and selective of menus—whom we have come to regard as the dominant netherworld force. It is telling that these slower zombies have succeeded despite—or perhaps because of—these so called “setbacks.”)
Never in history have so many, possessed with so little, done so much to further their purposes as have zombies.
Believe me, dear reader, I was once like you. I used to be a confused, embittered lost soul who haunted the self-help section of my local bookstore. In bestselling tome after tome, I failed to find the improvement I desired. (The smiling, attractive authors on the book jackets seem to have everything that I wanted for myself, but when I followed their prescriptions I was met only with frustration.)
I attended motivational seminars featuring enthusiastic speakers who held questionable credentials and doctorates from horrible correspondence schools, but never did I feel “excited about my life.” I hired uncertified and unlicensed “life coaches” to steer me on my way, but they only took my checks and steered me to a place where I still sucked.
I tried motivational tapes and CDs recorded by Zen masters in recording studios on mountaintops. I watched interactive meditation DVDs hand-crafted in Tibet.
Still, nirvana eluded me.
And even as good heath, physical attractiveness, emotional satisfaction, and spiritual oneness were denied me, I saw, in my day-to-day life, many people who had evidently achieved some (if not all) of these things I so desired. My first inclination (it was a reasonable one, though misguided) was to attempt to model myself after these people. If I could carefully observe them and do what they did, then surely (I thought) I would become like them. More importantly,I would find the common thread—the universal connection between them.
And yet, try as I did, I was never successful in this task. I struggled to see what it was that allowed these exceptional human specimens to become so. I failed, utterly, to find the emulation or patterning that would allow me to take on their characteristics. It seemed like an unsolvable mystery. A club I could never join. A secret society into which I was not invited.
This line of thought only encouraged me to assume that I was a born loser. That from the start, I had been doomed to a life of mediocrity and banality.
Then, one day, I did find it.
I did discover tha
t one central, singular thread of synchronicity linking enlightened, successful, and attractive people.
What let them command attention wherever they went and whatever they did? When they spoke, what made others hang on each word? How did they find the temerity to be brave and unflinching in every situation? What kept them from ever giving up? What kept them moving forward?
It could only be ... that they emulated a creature no less or greater than a member of the walking dead. That is, a zombie.
Once I understood this, new doors opened to me that had been heretofore shut. New experiences came my way, and I found myself granted access to secrets I had never dared dream I would know. Being like a zombie allowed me to attain a Zen state. I actualized the reality of my existence, in ways that only the reanimated can. I became the person I had always wanted to be ... by becoming like a zombie. In fact, the more like a zombie I acted, the better a person I became.
And you can too.
“But this is so counterintuitive,” you say?
Certainly. But hey, give it a shot. Other, traditional self-help manuals haven’t solved your problems have they? (If they have, then what’re you doing with this book? ... that’s what I thought, you lonely fatso.) The point is, you’ve tried the other self-help books. You’ve seen where those approaches to “contentment” and “enlightenment” lead. You’ve spent your hard-earned dollars on regimens emphasizing positivity and inner peace, only to find yourself a “negative-Nellie” who’s always at war with himself (or herself).
And since you’ve tried the rest, why not try the brain eating, grave-opening, speech-slurring best?
Want to be a “killer” in business? Or a lady-killer? Then model yourself after an actual killer for once.
If you want to be the kind of tough guy who says “I eat people like you for lunch” to his enemies, then act like a zombie (who actually does eat his enemies—or anyone, really—for lunch).
Being like a zombie is great. When you wake up in the morning, you can do whatever you want. You have no boss. You have no deadlines that you, yourself, don’t impose. Most importantly, you have no worries or cares. (Whoever heard of an anxious zombie, right?)
Other self-improvement manuals claim that they want to help you achieve “love” in your life, but ask yourself honestly—would you rather be loved or feared? Zombies are some of the most feared beings around, and their lives are pretty damn good. Being loved isn’t everything. Moving less in a touchy-feely direction and more in an eating-someone’s-brain direction can have tremendously positive impacts on your self-esteem and sense of existential wellbeing. You just have to know how to get started.
The first section of this manual contains a point-by-point analysis of the 24 habits, tendencies, and characteristics that make zombies so effective at everything that they do. This section illustrates the benefits of being more like a zombie, and covers the many different ways these benefits can be obtained. Adopt just one or two of these habits at first, if you like. Take them for a test-drive. Go at your own pace. There’s no reason for me to hard-sell adopting all of the traits at once, because I’m confident that that’s exactly what you’ll want to do after you’ve noticed how well they work.
The second section of this manual is a 12-week workshop intended for those desiring a more comprehensive and complete guide to becoming as close to a zombie as you can get without actually being a reanimated corpse (maybe you will be one day, though, if you play your cards right). This section is an intensive zombie-education program that will take you 90 days to complete. It has been carefully designed to provide the most optimal transformative immersion possible. Wish your life could be a “do over?” Want to make a “fresh start” for yourself? This program was designed for you.
Before beginning, ask yourself these questions honestly:
• Am I man (or woman) enough to do what it takes to get what I want?
• Am I ready for a program of self-improvement that will be nothing like the programs of instruction I may have tried before? (And I mean nothing ...)
• Am I prepared to say good-bye to the “old me” so I might be reborn (as if from a newly opened grave) as a dynamic, self-actualized, spiritually fulfilled zombie?
If your answers to these questions are yes, get ready to re-animate yourself for success with secrets from the undead!
PART ONE:
The 24 Habits of Highly Effective Zombies
It is obvious to any close observer that zombies have benefited from a combination of carefully cultivated habits and tendencies in order to become the superior specimens they are today. By identifying and emulating these habits, humans can enjoy many of the successes that zombies do.
Zombies don’t worry. Not about themselves. Not about others. Not about climate change. Nothing.
Zombies have “enough” of what they need in life (with the exception of living brains). Yet are, at the same time, “driven” with a passion and intensity that any CEO or motivational speaker would envy. Zombies don’t stop. Zombies don’t rest. And yet, zombies are at peace with this ceaselessness. And you can be too.
Zombies have moved beyond the pressures of society. A zombie never feels it “ought” to do something. A zombie never feels that it “should” be doing something (or avoiding something else). A zombie simply is who he or she is, and is at peace with that fact.
When you adopt the habits of a zombie, it’s like a fast track to the effectiveness you seek and the self-actualization you’ve always yearned for. Being like a zombie cuts right through the treacle of life. Cuts right down to the heart of the matter. (Then, when that heart has stopped beating, it has the brain for supper.)
If you want to become a better person and improve your life, you need to start taking on the habits of zombies.
1
Be Adaptable
Life’s gonna throw you some curveballs, and nobody knows this better than a zombie.
You may have to move far away from home to go to the college or university of your choice. Your company might downsize you around the holidays when you least expect it. Your desiccating corpse might be reanimated by an evil warlock’s spell, a secret government nerve agent, or radiation from a UFO.
Life’s going to throw stuff like this your way now and then. Need some advice on how to get through it? Look no further than our friend the zombie.
Zombies don’t ask “Why did this happen to me?” They don’t meditate on the meaning of their reanimation. Nope. It’s up out of the grave and right on the hunt for brains.
Zombies have a way of making the best of a situation.
Throw a zombie in the middle of the ocean, and hey, it’ll get back to land eventually. But in the meantime, it’s going to fuck up some sharks, probably an octopus or two, and, damn-straight, any unlucky fisherman it gets its rotting hands on. Sure, one day its inherent drive to locate and consume thinking human brains will drive the zombie back to land—and yeah, it might be down to bone and rags by then, but that thought’s not stopping it for a second.
Freeze a zombie in an arctic ice floe. Sure, it’s trapped for the short term. The moment global warming reaches it, though—boing! —it springs up good as new, ready to mess you up.
Burn a zombie. Throw acid on a zombie. All I can say is that you better finish the job, because those sons of bitches will just keep on coming.
Cut off a zombie’s limbs (one by one, if you like) and it will continue to drag itself after you.
Zombie Tip:
In some languages, the word for “crisis” is also the word for “opportunity.”
Zen Of Zombie (Zen of Zombie Series) Page 1